Three postgraduates have been awarded Best Poster Prize at the NUI Galway Neuroscience Research Day, held on December 2nd.
The Research Day is organised annually by the NUI Galway Neuroscience Research cluster with the support of the Health Research Board; this is the third consecutive year in which NFB-based students have been on the awards list.
Michelle Naughton, a first-year PhD student presented the winning poster entitled “Polymer mediated delivery of Xylosyltransferase-1 siRNA to suppress glial scar glycosaminoglycan systhesis”. The poster was co-authored by PhD students Mohammad Abu-Rub and Ben Newland, and describes how use of a novel, non-viral gene therapy attenuates the inhibitory nature of spinal cord scar tissue, thereby facilitating improved nerve repair and functional recovery following injury. The gene therapy works by reducing levels of molecules which prohibit nerve regeneration. Mohammad Abu-Rub is the lead author on the paper, and Ben Newland developed the polymer used to deliver the gene therapy to the injury site.
